Arundhathi Subramaniam Poems

May things stay the way they are
in the simplest place you know.
...

You believe you know me,
wide-eyed Eng Lit type
from a sun-scalded colony,
reading my Keats – or is it yours –
...

In the women's compartment
of a Bombay local
we seek
no personal epiphanies.
...

It’s taken time
to realise
no one survives.
Not even the ordinary.
...

Give me a home
that isn't mine,
where I can slip in and out of rooms
without a trace,
...

To swing yourself
from moment to moment,
to weave a clause
that leaves room
...

My grandmother,
wise even at eight,
hid under her bed
when her first suitor came home.
...

I live on a road,
a long magic road,
full of beautiful people.
...

Driving through the Trossachs I see
the picture I drew as a five-year-old
in Bombay – a rectangle
with two square windows,
...

This shoebox started out
a stiff-upper-lipped quadrilateral,
Upholder of Symmetry, Proportion, Principle,
sanctuary to an upright couple
...